JP2005237020A - Digital video processing apparatus and method - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a digital video processing apparatus which minimizes video deterioration, even when if further proprietary compression process is conducted to a compression-processed input image information. <P>SOLUTION: The apparatus comprises an input means to input encoded picture signal and sound signal; a first identification means to identify the picture signal and the sound signal input by the input means; a decoding means to decode the picture signal and the sound signal identified by the identification means; a reencoding means to re-encode at least either of the image signal and the sound signal by a different encoding system from the image signal or the sound signal; an identification information generating means to generate information to identify the picture signal and the sound signal encoded by the reencoding means as a set of data blocks; a recording means to record in a recording medium, by adding the identification information to the reencoded image signal and the sound signal; a detecting means to detect the identification information; a reproducing means to reproduce the image signal and the sound signal; and an operating means to instruct recording, reproduction and detection of the image signal and the sound signal. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2005,JPO&NCIPI

Description

  The present invention relates to a digital video processing apparatus and a digital video processing method that facilitate data handling in input / output while performing multistage compression processing.

In recent years, digital processing of images has been studied. In particular, for high-efficiency coding for compressing image data, various methods have been proposed for standardization. The high-efficiency encoding technique encodes image data at a smaller bit rate in order to improve the efficiency of digital transmission and recording. As such a high-efficiency coding system, CCITT is a standardization recommendation H.264 for video conference / telephone. 261, a JPEG (Joint Photographic Coding Experts Group) system for color still images and an MPEG (Moving Picture Image Coding Experts Group) system for moving pictures are proposed. These three types of proposals are all based on DCT.
In addition, as an application to HDTV, in the United States, the FCC is promoting the realization of digital HDTV broadcasting by using a compression technique improved by the MPEG method called ATV (Advanced Television).

Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 4-371074

As described above, when the input / output image forms are diversified, for example, when recording is attempted, problems associated with hardware compatibility and an increase in recording capacity are caused. Conventionally, when a compressed image is received, the image is recorded as it is or expanded and reproduced. However, when the storage capacity of the recording medium is taken into consideration, there are cases where further compression processing is required.
The component-type D1-type VTR has better image quality than the composite-type D2-type VTR in the commercial VTR market. Inconsistencies in format have been noted.

  The present invention has been made in view of the above-described circumstances, and even when an original compression process is further performed on the compressed input image information, there is little deterioration in image quality, and the data structure is the same as that of the input image information at the time of output. An object of the present invention is to obtain a digital video processing apparatus and a digital video processing method.

  The digital video processing apparatus of the present invention includes an input means for inputting an encoded video signal and an audio signal, a first identification means for identifying the video signal and the audio signal input by the input means, and the identification means Decoding means for decoding the video signal and audio signal identified by the recoding means, re-encoding means for re-encoding at least one of the video signal and audio signal by a different encoding method from the video signal or audio signal, and the re-encoding means. Identification information generating means for generating information for identifying the video signal and audio signal encoded by the encoding means as a set of data blocks; and adding the identification information to the re-encoded video signal and audio signal. Recording means for recording on the recording medium, detecting means for detecting the identification information, reproducing means for reproducing the video signal and audio signal, and the video signal and audio signal Recording, reproduction, and is characterized in that an operating means for instructing the search.

  The digital video processing method of the present invention includes an input step of inputting an encoded video signal and an audio signal, a first identification step of identifying the video signal and the audio signal input by the input step, A decoding step of decoding the video signal and the audio signal identified by the identification step, and a re-encoding step of re-encoding at least one of the video signal and the audio signal by an encoding scheme different from the video signal or the audio signal; An identification information generating step for generating information for identifying the video signal and audio signal encoded in the re-encoding step as a set of data blocks; and the identification information in the re-encoded video signal and audio signal. In addition, a recording step for recording on the recording medium, a detection step for detecting the identification information, a reproduction step for reproducing the video signal and the audio signal, and the video signal and sound Recording of the signal, playback, and is characterized in that an operation step of instructing the search.

  According to the present invention, by selecting and re-encoding different encoding methods for the input video signal and audio signal, the image is recorded on the recording medium with less image quality degradation and less data amount than the input time. It becomes possible. Further, it is possible to reproduce a video signal and an audio signal at a desired location based on the recorded identification information.

Hereinafter, an embodiment of a digital image information processing apparatus of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the drawings.
(1) Relationship between processing steps and data amount FIGS. 1 and 2 show changes in the data amount in each processing step from the input of the information source to the output transmission path.
In FIG. 1, a case where a signal compressed by an ATV (Advanced TV) system proposed by the US FCC from an information source and digitally transmitted is internally compressed by the MPEG-1 system will be described as an example.

  The ATV system is being consolidated by the Grand Alliance as a unified standard for US digital HDTV. The features of this ATV system are as follows. The scanning method employs multi-scanning that supports both an interlace method with 1080 effective scanning lines and a 720 progressive method with square pixels. Further, the system supports both 24 Hz and 30 Hz in the frame rate and 59.94 Hz and 60 Hz in the field frequency.

  The video system conforms to MPEG-2 and ensures complete compatibility at the high level of the main profile. For this reason, the B frame was adopted and AC leakage was excluded. In this way, since it is compliant with MPEG-2, there are many common processing parameters with MPEG-1, which is the basis of MPEG-2. In the MPEG system, the decoder's upper compatibility is ensured. However, even in the case of two-stage compression as in this example, the image quality is maintained as can be seen from the MPEG-1 algorithm and parameter similarity described later. It is effective in terms of

Such an ATV system input signal is internally compressed by the MPEG-1 system. The characteristics of this MPEG-1 will be described below.
MPEG-1 has a coding rate of 1.5 Mbps and is based on a coding method using motion compensated interframe prediction and DCT. In order to realize the random access function, a layer composed of a plurality of image frames called GOP (Group of Pictures) is provided. The GOP is composed of three types of encoded frames: an intra-frame encoded frame (I picture), a forward predictive encoded frame (P picture), and a bidirectional predictive encoded frame (B picture).
Each frame (Picture layer) is hierarchically configured by Slice, Macro Block (MB), and Block layers. Picrure is composed of one or more slices, Slice is composed of one or more MBs, and MB is composed of six BlocKs (four luminance signals Block and two color difference signals Block). The block size is 8 pixels * 8 lines.

Regarding motion, there are a method using a correlation between frames and an intra-frame prediction method as a prediction method. Furthermore, motion compensation may be performed by searching for motion in units of 16 * 16 blocks or by searching the entire screen. For example, in the half-pel motion compensation, a predicted pixel position is an average with two pixels rounded between two pixels.
As a compression conversion principle, for example, in the NTSC system, Hadamard conversion may be used instead of DCT.

  In FIG. 1, in the first compression circuit 50, the data amount of the information source is reduced by the ATV compression process using DCT. In this state, the video signal is supplied to the receiving side through the transmission path. The input video signal is returned to the data amount of the original information source by the first decompression circuit 51. Next, standardization of the data structure in accordance with, for example, the CCIR recommendation 601 is performed in the standardization circuit 52 which is a preprocessing for defining internal processing. The luminance signal is sampled at 13.5 MHz, the color signal is sampled at 6.75 MHz, and quantization is performed at 8 bits. Also, in order to match the SIF (Source Input Format) sampling, which is the basic image format of MPEG-1, the chroma sampling is converted from 4: 2: 2 to 4: 2: 0. This facilitates handling as MPEG-1 compliant data.

  Next, the standardized video signal is compressed by the second compression circuit 53 to further reduce the data amount. In this state, the compressed data is recorded on the storage medium 54. Details of the recording operation will be described later. Next, at the time of reproduction, the data is decompressed by the second decompression circuit 55 to the data amount before compression, compressed again by the first compression circuit 56, and output through the transmission line.

FIG. 2 shows a case where a signal compressed by the CIF standard, which is a common intermediate format as a world standard, is digitally transmitted from an information source.
CIF (Common Intermediate Format) is standardized as a video conference and videophone coding together with QCIF (Quater CIF) with the number of CIF pixels reduced to 1/4, and is a global standard based on motion compensated prediction and DCT Format. DCT is performed in 8 * 8 pixel blocks. Intraframe coding mode that encodes the input signal as it is, and interframe prediction that encodes the prediction error from the previous frame in units of macroblocks consisting of four 8 * 8 pixel luminance signal blocks and corresponding color difference signal blocks There is an encoding mode.

  Motion compensation is performed in the range of horizontal and vertical and + -15 pixels in units of macroblocks. Intraframe coding is performed in the same manner as the JPEG baseline system. When such a CIF image is input, the amount of input data supplied from the transmission path is small as shown in FIG. 2 in contrast to FIG. 1, so that the amount of data is increased during the standardization process to facilitate internal processing. . Other compression and decompression processes are the same as in the example of FIG.

  As described above, according to the present invention, in accordance with information sources having different data structures, internal standardization is performed, compression processing is performed, and recording / reproduction is performed.

Next, specific processing according to the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. In FIGS. 3 and 4, the same portions as those in FIG. 1 are denoted by the same reference numerals.
3 and 4, the input signal input from the transmission line is input to the first decompression circuit 51 and also input to the method determination circuit 57 to determine the image method, and the determined information is used as the first information. Recorded in the storage medium 54 as the discrimination information ID1. This ID 1 is further input to the first rule book circuit 58 determined with reference to the rule book 1 in Table 1, and the input image system is input to the first decompression circuit 51. Thereby, the expansion | extension suitable for the said system can be performed.

<Specific example-1>
In the example of FIG. 3, ID <b> 1 from the method determining circuit 57 that determines based on the syntax of ATV or the like is input to the method determining circuit 60. In order to determine the optimum method, the method determining circuit 60 refers to the rule book 1 and rule book 2 in Tables 1 and 2 and uses the method determined by the method determining circuit 60 as the second discrimination information ID2 as a storage medium. 54.

  For example, if it is determined that the method is HD1125, a common factor is selected from the rule book 2 in order to minimize image quality degradation among factors defined in the rule book 1. In the present embodiment, the second rulebook circuit 59 uses a common method in that DCT is performed with the number of blocks 16 * 16 and quantization is performed with 8 bits, with particular emphasis on the block size, which is a major factor in determining image quality during re-encoding. Method 2-4 is determined by selecting from the above.

  The ID2 determined in this way is supplied to the second compression circuit 53 through the second rule book circuit 59 so as to be compressed in accordance with the determined method. Thereby, an internal unique compression process optimal for the input signal is performed. After decompression by the first decompression circuit 51, standardization is performed by the standardization circuit 52 as preprocessing, and further compression processing is performed with the same factor as the compression mode at the time of input, thereby reducing image quality degradation and a smaller amount of data than at the time of input. Thus, an image can be recorded on the storage medium 54.

<Specific example-2>
FIG. 4 shows an example of using the correspondence table 61 that predetermines the method discrimination and the compression rate for each method regarding the method determination. Details of the correspondence table 61 in the figure are shown in Table 3.

  First, ID1 is supplied to the method determination circuit 60, and the method is determined. Further, by making it possible to select three types of A, B, and C according to the compression rate, deterioration of image quality is prevented as much as possible. Is possible. Note that the parameter may be selected in consideration of the Q characteristic and the like. Then, the determined method is recorded as ID2 and supplied to the second compression circuit 53 to perform compression processing and record an image.

  At the time of reproduction, ID2 information is read from the storage medium 54, and information on the method is determined according to the second rulebook circuit 59. In response to the output signal, the second decompression circuit 55 decompresses the signal. Further, the ID1 information is read from the storage medium 54 and compressed by the first compression circuit 56 in accordance with the first rulebook circuit 58 so as to coincide with the data amount at the time of input. By outputting in this way, it becomes possible to handle the same data in input and output, and the deterioration of image quality during that time is eliminated as much as possible.

The number of pixels of the image structure shown in the rule book 1 is as follows.
CIF: 360 * 288
QCIF: 180 * 144
NTSC: 720 * 525
HDTV: 1920 * 1125

  Further, FIG. 5 shows details of the number of pixels on the screen for each image structure. In FIG. 5, the input / output screen is illustrated as a pixel image. The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of encoded effective pixels. NTSC / PAL and SECAM are also shown.

<Specific example-3>
In each of the above specific examples, since the rule book is always referred to and written when determining the method, it takes time to access the rule book. Therefore, in this specific example-3, a method of generating a method change flag according to the input signal is adopted. That is, if the video processing method of the input signal is always the same, CFL = 0 and no processing is changed and processing is performed according to a certain rule. On the other hand, when the video system ends in the middle, CFL = 1 is detected, ID1 shown in the above specific example 1 or 2 is confirmed, and optimum compression according to the video system is selected and processed according to a predetermined rule book.

By doing so, since the compression processing is performed without accessing the rule book by the same method unless the method is changed, the compression processing corresponding to the video method can be performed efficiently.
Further, when recording of ID1 and ID2 in each data block is stopped, the data rate is reduced.
Further, when ID1, ID2 and CFL are written together, the decoding process at the time of reproduction of a special screen such as search does not break down while improving the efficiency.

(2) Recording Operation Hereinafter, the recording operation will be described with reference to FIG.
Left (L) and right (R) stereo audio signals are input from the audio signal input terminals 1 and 2, respectively, and are converted into digital audio signals by the A / D converters 4 and 5. The digital audio signal is subjected to various noise removal and dynamic range restriction by the signal processing circuits 7 and 8, respectively, and then the audio data compression circuit 10 performs data compression processing for the audio signal. For example, adaptive transform coding (ATAC, ASPEC) or band division coding (MUSICAM, SB / ADPCM) proposed by MPEG may be used, or a vector in a two-channel mixture using L / R correlation. Encoding or the like may be used.

  On the other hand, a video signal such as video input from the video input terminal 3 is converted into a digital video signal by the A / D converter 6 capable of processing at higher speed than the A / D converters 4 and 5. After this digital video signal is processed by the video signal processing circuit 9, the video data compression circuit 11 for the video signal compresses the data amount to about several tenths to several hundredths. For example, inter-frame correlation processing using temporal image correlation, motion compensation (MC) for reducing image quality degradation in the above-described method, and according to the MPEG encoding method, a predetermined number of frame images This can be realized by composing GOP and appropriately combining compression with forward prediction frames (P pictures) performed from the front on the time axis and bidirectional prediction frames (B pictures) performed from the front and back (past and future). is there.

  Specifically, among the algorithms proposed in MPEG, MPEG-1 can ensure a standard image quality of about 1/2 inch VTR, and MPEG-2 can ensure an image quality higher than NTSC. Details of the processing are described, for example, in “Front-line report digital television” published by Nikkei BP in 1992, pages 34-44.

  Next, data from an ID signal generation circuit 12 (to be described later), audio data, and video data are synthesized by the data synthesis circuit 13 and then stored in the main memory 18. The main memory 18 is controlled by a memory controller 17 such as a memory address and writing / reading. Further, the memory controller 17 is controlled by the system controller 16 as a whole device such as operation switching.

  The system controller 16 receives an instruction such as recording / playback / search by the operation key 19 and controls the memory controller 17, and at the same time, indicates a time code indicating an operation state, recording / playback time, and the like. And the like are displayed on the display member 20, and the address information generation circuit 15 is also notified of the time code and the like. There are mainly two types of time codes. The first is the elapsed time from the beginning of the recording medium or video program, the cumulative time of camera shooting, and the like. The second is the date of recording or camera shooting, time of hour / minute / second frame, and the like. In order to generate the latter time code, a calendar clock generation circuit 14 is provided.

  The address information generation circuit 15 receives data such as information storage status from the memory controller 17 and transfers the data to the ID signal generation circuit 12 as information indicating the data amount of each information. An example of the contents of this data is shown in FIG.

  Based on information from the system controller 16, a time code, image quality, audio mode selection, and the like are generated. Based on information from the memory controller 17, the amount of video and audio data (data length when variable length code is possible) and The first address value on the memory for storing data is generated and transferred to the ID signal generation circuit 12 to be grouped as each ID data block, and the data synthesis circuit 13 forms a data block. The head address of the main memory 18 in which this data block is stored is sequentially written to the ID file.

(3) Data Configuration FIG. 7 shows an example of data storage in the main memory 18 configured with a solid-state memory.
FIG. 7 shows a state in which the horizontal axis is a time axis and an ID signal is generated every predetermined time (T ₀ ).
7 shows a conceptual diagram of the address space of the solid-state memory. After the ID signal, video and audio information data having different data amounts for each processing period are sequentially stored by variable length coding. For this reason, ID data is generated at regular intervals (T ₀ ), but not at regular intervals on the memory as shown in the figure.

  Therefore, in order to enable high-speed access to the data block at the time of retrieval, an ID file in which addresses indicating the storage locations of the data blocks are collected as shown in the upper part of FIG. In this ID file, only the head address of the data block is stored in an area preset according to the storage capacity of the main memory 18 in an orderly manner. This ID data has a fixed length, and in the example of FIG. 7, has a total of 10 types of basic information.

  As these basic information, image quality and sound quality are selected by trade-off with time code and recording time according to SMPTE, and the start address and data amount of each data of variable length AV (audio and video) are stored. The video system discrimination has two discrimination information IDs for selecting a decompression or compression method to a recording medium according to input video information. What determines the compression form of the signal from the information source is the video system discrimination 1 and handles the above-mentioned ID1, and what determines the compression system on the receiving side is the video system discrimination 2 and handles the above-mentioned ID2. . The deleted flag is a logical erasure state that can be restored before physical delete processing when data once recorded is erased, and normal reproduction is prohibited by the flag.

The audio signal is composed of initialization information (reset data) for each of the L and R channels and variable-length audio data subjected to compression processing.
The video signal is composed of, for example, an initialization screen (video reset data) by intra-frame encoding or the like and compressed data variable-length encoded by various compression methods.

For each ID data, the video data and audio data having the above configuration constitute a data block as a set. This data block is characterized in that it is generated at intervals defined by the time axis.
An example of the video signal is shown in FIG. Here, a TV signal having an aspect ratio of 9:16 is used as an input signal based on a TV signal of the HDTV system (vertical 1125 lines). The HDTV signal is approximately 2.5 times the resolution in the horizontal direction and 2 times the resolution in the vertical direction with respect to the NTSC signal, and a total of 5 times the amount of information is generated for 30 screens per second. Supplied to terminal 3.

  This video signal is converted into digital data by the A / D converter 6 and then input as a component signal (Y: RY: BY = 4: 2: 2) to the video signal processing circuit 9. Here, when the luminance (Y) per pixel is 8 bits and the color difference is 8 bits quantized at a sampling rate of 1/2, 1.2 Gbps is obtained. This is subjected to a 1/200 compression process, and the data amount is deleted up to about 6 Mbps.

  Further, since the data rate of a stereo audio signal having a sound quality equivalent to that of a compact disc is 1.5 Mbps, the data is subjected to 1/5 compression to 1.3 Mbps. Therefore, the AV total is about 6.3 Mbps. Therefore, it can be recorded for 10 minutes at 1 Gbit.

In addition to the current standard TV broadcast system NTSC / PAL, H. It may be in the form of QCIF and CIF, which are international standards for videophones defined in H.261.
The AV data is stored in the main memory 18 by the data processing as described above, but it is possible to increase the main memory or replace the memory form such as an IC card.

(4) Reproduction Operation When a reproduction operation is instructed by the operation key 19, the system controller 16 displays on the display member 20 that the reproduction operation is in progress, the memory controller 17 controls the memory address and read / write, and the main memory 18 The information signal stored by the recording operation is read out. In the above example, 30 screens of video information per second, stereo (or 2 channels) audio information, and ID information for searching for them are read out.

Information is supplied to the data distributor 21 in a mixed state (serial data information). The data distributor 21 distributes the data as follows.
For the ID data, the information shown in FIG. 7 is detected for each ID in the search information reproduction circuit 22, display information for monitoring is generated in the display information reproduction circuit 23, and restored by the video data decompression circuit 24. The video information is combined with the adder 27, converted into a general-purpose analog signal by the D / A converter 28, and displayed on the video monitor 30.

  The audio data is subjected to a data expansion process opposite to the data compression process at the time of recording in the audio data expansion circuit 25 as with the video data, and an audio signal equivalent to the input signal at the time of recording is reproduced. The data selection circuit 26 outputs data to be supplied to the D / A converter 29 and the digital audio output terminal 33 for generating an audio signal for acoustic monitoring.

  Each video and audio data is reproduced by correcting the deviation due to the delay time required for the reproduction signal processing using the above-mentioned ID signal. In synchronization with the information from the display information generation circuit 23, the video and audio reproduction signals are output by the data selection circuit 26. This ID corresponds to a so-called time stamp that synchronizes between different media by providing code timing information in the packet data located in the third layer packet header in the bit stream configuration in MPEG-1. It is.

(5) File Configuration The main data structure and data processing have been described in detail above. Next, the data file configuration adopted for improving data search performance will be described below with reference to FIG.
An AV data file 40 for storing main AV data, a system controller 47 for performing various controls, an operation key 48 for inputting various instructions to the system controller 47, and data in accordance with instructions from the system controller 47 A search file is added to a basic configuration including an information processing circuit 41 that performs processing and an information input / output circuit 42 that performs processing related to information input / output.

Since the basic configuration described above is included in FIG. 7 as described above, the hardware description is omitted, and only the software configuration related to the file configuration and its generation will be described below.
An example of shooting using a video camera and searching based on index information automatically generated at this time will be described with reference to the flowcharts of FIGS.

<Recording system>
9 and 10, in a state where video and audio signals from a video camera (not shown) are supplied via the input terminal, shooting starts or ends with the operation key 48 in steps S1 and S2 in FIG. Is input, the system controller 47 instructs the index generation circuit 46 to generate index information. In response to this, the index generation circuit 46 generates or updates two search files in steps S3 to S9. The index information is divided into levels 1 to 3 according to the contents.
One of them is a time file 44, which stores the time at which an index information generation instruction is issued in conjunction with an ID file corresponding to the AV data being input as time data. For this reason, the search operation based on the time can be quickly performed. As described above, since the ID file is generated at regular time intervals, if the shooting start time and end time are known, any time in the middle can be associated with AV data.

The other is a table of contents file 45, which is performed in steps S10 to S11. This table of contents information corresponds to chapters and paragraphs in the book, and in music, it corresponds to movements and measures. Specifically, if the start / stop of recording is a small headline, the power is turned on / off, the content is out, and a large headline is choreographed according to the date, automatic generation can be easily performed. Further, a complicated table of contents can be generated in any way according to preference according to manual operation.
Table 4 shows a configuration example of the time file and the table of contents file.

  In steps S12 and S13, a new ID creation command is issued from the index generation circuit 46 to the ID file 43 in response to a shooting start instruction, and an ID generation stop command is issued in steps S14 to S16 according to a shooting end instruction. . Although this flow is indicated by a one-dot chain line in FIG. 9, a configuration may be adopted in which information such as the data amount is directly written from the AV data file 40 to the empty area of the ID file.

<Reproduction system>
A search procedure at the time of reproduction will be described with reference to FIG. 11 using configuration examples of a time file and a table of contents file shown in Table 4.
Index information can be set from level 1 to level 4. In this example, the above-mentioned large, medium, and small headings are assigned to 1 to 3, respectively, and 4 is unused, so all zeros are assigned. An index word is formed in this minimum level unit.
The start ID number and end ID number are registered in the ID file item, the start date and time and the hour, minute, and second are registered in the time file item, and the index table of contents name is registered in the table of contents file item as required. The Of course, it can be blank.

  Accordingly, in such a state, in steps S21 to S34, the ID file is accessed using the ID corresponding to the index, the AV data storage address is read, and the AV data file 40 is accessed using this address information. Thus, it becomes possible to reproduce a desired portion.

  On the other hand, in the search from the table of contents file, the index is searched in S36 to S40. If the table of contents name is registered, the table of contents name is displayed on the display. If the table of contents is not registered, the procedure is almost the same as the time search (index → The AV data file may be accessed by ID → AV) and displayed on the display as video information.

As another embodiment, the present invention can be applied not only to a recording / reproducing storage system but also to an information transmission communication system.
As an example of a combination of two-stage compression methods, a combination of compression using DCT and compression using a fractal method may be used.

It is the block diagram which showed the relationship between the process step by the Example of this invention, and data amount. It is the block diagram which showed the relationship between the process step by other Example of this invention, and data amount. It is a block diagram which shows the principal part of the digital image information processing apparatus by the Example of this invention. It is a block diagram which shows the principal part of the digital image information processing apparatus by the other Example of this invention. It is explanatory drawing which shows the representative example of an input-output image. 1 is a block diagram showing an entire digital image information processing apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention. It is a conceptual diagram of the data structure by the Example of this invention. It is a conceptual diagram of the input information by the Example of this invention. It is a conceptual diagram of the file structure by the Example of this invention. 3 is a flowchart according to an embodiment of the present invention. 5 is a flowchart at the time of search according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Explanation of symbols

53 Second compression circuit 57 Method discrimination circuit 58 Rule book 1
59 Rulebook 2
60 Method decision circuit

Claims (4)

Input means for inputting encoded video and audio signals;
First identification means for identifying a video signal and an audio signal input by the input means;
Decoding means for decoding the video signal and the audio signal identified by the identification means;
Re-encoding means for re-encoding at least one of the video signal and the audio signal in a different encoding method from the video signal or the audio signal;
Identification information generating means for generating information for identifying the video signal and the audio signal encoded by the re-encoding means as a set of data blocks;
Recording means for adding the identification information to the re-encoded video and audio signals and recording the recording information on a recording medium;
Detecting means for detecting the identification information;
Reproducing means for reproducing the video signal and the audio signal;
A digital video processing apparatus comprising operating means for instructing recording, reproduction, and retrieval of the video signal and audio signal.   The digital video processing apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the re-encoding unit is selectable from a plurality of types of encoding. An input step of inputting the encoded video signal and audio signal;
A first identification step for identifying the video signal and the audio signal input in the input step;
A decoding step of decoding the video signal and the audio signal identified by the identification step;
A re-encoding step of re-encoding at least one of the video signal and the audio signal by an encoding method different from the video signal or the audio signal;
An identification information generating step for generating information for identifying the video signal and the audio signal encoded in the re-encoding step as a set of data blocks;
A recording step of adding the identification information to the re-encoded video signal and audio signal and recording it on a recording medium;
A detection step of detecting the identification information;
A reproduction step of reproducing the video signal and the audio signal;
A digital video processing method comprising: an operation step of instructing recording, reproduction, and retrieval of the video signal and the audio signal.   4. The digital video processing method according to claim 3, wherein the re-encoding step can be selected from a plurality of types of encoding.

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